


Perfume

by todaylookslikerain



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Implied Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 07:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4616415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todaylookslikerain/pseuds/todaylookslikerain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before the End of the World party, Chloe asks Max for a favor. Major EP4 spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perfume

Max could still see the dirt underneath Chloe’s fingernails. Her knuckles were red, a bruise silently crawling up from beneath her skin—she had given her walls a beating, torn down posters, knocked down picture frames, and basically destroyed her bedroom. Max hadn’t stopped her. She had simply stood at the door feeling numb, the smell of Rachel’s decaying body still caught in her throat.

The two now sat back to back on Chloe’s bed in a heavy silence. She wasn’t sure if it had been minutes or hours. Time had little meaning for Max these days. Every now and then a word would crawl up to her lips—an apology, some half-assed condolence (as though that would be of any comfort), a desperate plea to snap Chloe back to reality. She swallowed these words back down with the fear of choking on them. The silence between them was growing like a flame she wanted to smother, but her hand burned every time it reached towards Chloe’s.

They needed a game plan. The End of the World party was going to start in just a few hours and the way Chloe kept gripping her gun left Max feeling queasy; she couldn’t tell whether she wanted to use it more on Nathan or herself. Blowing out Nathan’s brains in the midst of a high school party obviously wasn’t the best solution here, but after seeing Chloe crumble at the junk yard, Max couldn’t bring herself to stop her.

“I still have some of Rachel’s clothes in my closet… well, besides what you wore the other day. It’s funny. They even still smell like her perfume a bit, if you’re close enough. I used to tell her to stop wearing that shit, but sometimes I’ll just…”

Her voice cracked. She didn’t finish.

“Can you just… pretend to be Rachel for a bit? Please?”

Max snapped out of her temporary trance, stumbling off the bed in a frenzy. Chloe’s eyes looked empty (and still noticeably puffy), unfazed by Max’s visceral reaction.

“The blue plaid shirt.”

Max felt paralyzed.

“It’s, um… falling off the hanger a bit, I think. It might be on the floor.”

Max found it hanging off the side of Chloe’s clothes hamper, wrinkled and worn out. She was surprised to see how much her hands were shaking as she picked it up. It felt like her body was on some sort of broken autopilot, her brain disconnected from her movements. _You can always rewind back to your chlorine-brand t-shirt and generic jeans._ Max lifted her shirt off her head and neatly folded it onto a nearby chair. _You suck. I like my shirt and jeans._ She unclasped her bra. _… but it would be cool to try on Rachel’s clothes, just to see if they fit._ Chloe had been wrong; they weren’t exactly the same size. Even if they were, she couldn’t have imagined this shirt fitting her the same way it fit Rachel—it felt loose in the bust area and tight around her waist. Max was built like a stick and Rachel was built like a model. It was all wrong.

_I dare you to kiss me. I double dare you. Kiss me now._

Her chest felt tight.

Chloe sat up and turned towards Max with her eyes glazed over, almost as though she was looking through her rather than at her. At this point, she would have felt less vulnerable not wearing anything at all than wearing Rachel’s clothes. Her legs shook as she wordlessly walked towards the bed. Max suddenly realized her lips were dry and cracked and felt self conscious of the fact. Chloe grabbed her hand and pulled her closer, the thought dissipating as their lips met.

Their kisses were uneven and awkward—well, it was surely Max who was the one fucking it up, not Chloe. She imagined Rachel in the same spot as her months earlier, confident and experienced, the exact opposite of Max. After all, she had only just had her first kiss yesterday, if you could even call that a kiss. She flinched at the memory of Chloe pulling away from her and laughing it off.

Flash forward less than 24 hours later and she was suddenly half-dressed and pinned down under the same girl. Chloe’s lips left Max’s mouth—Max wondered if it was because she was a bad kisser and felt her face flush—and moved softly to her neck and down to her collarbone. Max let out a soft sight and bit her lower lips as her breath dispersed into the air. She didn’t want to like this; well, at least not in these circumstances.

Chloe reached for Max’s hands, pushing them back behind her and against the headboard, fingers intertwined. _Oh._ Chloe reached down to unzip Max’s (not Rachel’s) jeans, and before Max could protest, Chloe’s lips were back on her own, stifling her hesitations.

Maybe this was okay after all. They weren’t doing anything wrong. It was okay, it was okay. Besides, she was here before—

“Rachel…” whimpered Chloe, as she inhaled into the blue plaid shirt, savoring its scent.

The words escaped Choe’s lips and pierced through Max’s stomach like a knife. Their kisses suddenly tasted like formaldehyde. She felt like throwing up. She pushed Chloe off and leapt off the bed, hands pressed up against her face. She tried not to heave, exhaling in heavy, measured breathes in a futile attempt to regain her composure.

“I’m sorry, this was a stupid idea,” said Chloe, “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, I’m fucking stupid, I’m pathetic. You’re never going to be Rachel, I know that, I know.”

Max unbuttoned Rachel’s shirt with unsteady fingers, fumbling even to get the first button off. She felt like she was tearing someone else’s skin off as she threw it back onto the floor.

She rewound.

The two now sat back to back on Chloe’s bed in a heavy silence.

“Come on, Chloe,” said Max. “We need to make preparations for tonight.”

Chloe stared off into the distance, swallowing the request Max knew she wanted to make.

“Yeah. Sorry, you’re right. I was thinking that we’d start by….” Chloe’s words melded together in Max’s mind like static.

_‘You’ll never be Rachel.’_ She heard nothing else.


End file.
